Even though Calm is primarily consumed as a phone app, you can bet the domain name is paying dividends. There are two reasons I think this domain is important.

First, Calm.com gives the app credibility. There are lots of meditation apps out there and quality varies. Having this great domain name shows that the company is serious. You need not worry about paying for an annual subscription; it’s not some copycat app.

Second, it’s great for advertising. The company is doing lots of audio advertising lately on podcasts. It can refer people to the Calm.com domain rather than tell them to just download the app. The company gives each podcast a special URL in the format calm.com/name to offer customers a 25% discount. (I bet it gets about the same revenue from its site with a 25% discount than it gets when someone pays full price through Apple’s app store.)

I don’t believe that’s how it works. If you buy a subscription to a service outside of Apple’s ecosystem then you can log into that service on an Apple app and Apple doesn’t get a cut. That’s why Amazon video makes you buy things through the Amazon site before you can consume them on their iOS app.

I don’t see how any meditation company whose main product is an app subscription could ever maintaining a 1 billion evaluation, I don’t care how good the domain is, but kudos to them for having calm.com.